You're talking about the MPEG-2 encoder? ATI's "Wonder" chipset is a hardware-based MPEG-2 encoder. I was just using it yesterday.

That being said, I have Windows XP Pro, not MCE. I used the TV Wonder for about 20 minutes before I realized that with my older Nvidia graphics card and the TV Wonder, I have no hardware DVD DECODER. I'd been using a software codec from Intervideo to watch DVD's in Windows Media Player. (didn't even realize it I guess)

So I took the TV Wonder back, and bought the AIW9800.

Sorry, I should have specified. It's the TV tuner encoder that is software for the AIWs.

Not totally related, but in a strange bit of irony, the HDTV Wonder has both a Digital Tuner and an Analog Tuner on it, so you get OTA HDTV and regular OTA TV [no QAM], and PiP from one card if you know your way around graphedit. BUT, the digital tuner is HW and the the analog tuner is SW. Not a problem under XP, but again, MCE requires a HW tuner, AND the Digital Tuner needs an analog tuner to set itself up, finding channels and the TiVO [Zap2It] guide.

I have the AIW9800Pro and the HDTVW. It took some research and some fiddling, but I can now, if I wish, view or record 3 seperate sources at a time, one of them being HiDef. Worth the work, natch.